Mel Brooks in the Cultural Industries

Survival and Prolonged Adaptation

Which strategies has Mel Brooks used to survive, adapt and thrive in the cultural industries? How has he gained his reputation as a multimedia survivor? Alex Symons takes a unique, artist-focused approach in order to systematically identify the range of Brooks’s adaptation strategies across the Hollywood film, Broadway theatre and American television industries.

By combining a cultural industries approach together with that of adaptation studies, this book also identifies an important new industrial practice employed by Brooks - defined here as ‘prolonged adaptation’. More significantly, Symons also employs this method to explain the so far neglected way that Brooks’s adaptations have contributed towards changing production trends, changes in critical attitudes, and towards the ongoing integration of the cultural industries today.

An essential read for film students and scholars researching adaptation, this refreshing new approach will also be valued by everyone studying the cultural industries.

Recycled Hollywood for the TV Generation: The Rise of Parody and the Fall of Mel Brooks the Director, 1974-1995

Rethinking New Hollywood: Intermedial Blockbusters in 1974

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Young Frankenstein (1974)

A New Film-Focused Strategy: The Fall of Mel Brooks, 1987-1995

Spaceballs (1987)

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)

The Integration of the Film and Theatre Industries: The Producers, 1968-2007

The Producers (1968)

The Modern Revival of The Producers (1968)

The Broadway Adaptation: The Producers (2001)

Remade in Hollywood: The Producers (2005)

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Dr Alex Symons was awarded his PhD by the Department of Culture, Film and Media at the University of Nottingham. Articles of his research have been published in the Journal of Popular Film and Television, the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, and in Celebrity Studies.

Reviews

This original study not only provides an informative discussion of Mel Brooks' career but also demonstrates how the engines of contemporary culture are fueled by the continual recycling and adaptation of familiar material.